


Heliotrope

by a_gay_poster



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - Magic, Fluff, GaaLee Fest 2019, M/M, Panic Attacks, Plants as Substitutes for Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-09-24 04:37:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20352505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gay_poster/pseuds/a_gay_poster
Summary: Gaara has a suspiciously green thumb. Lee’s just a guy who’s good with his hands. When Lee comes into Gaara’s garden shop looking for help with his dying plant, sparks fly.Written for the GaaLee Summertime of Love Fest 2019, Day 4: Flower Shop AU





	1. Acanthocereus tetragonus (Fairy Castle Cactus)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is already complete - new chapters will be posted every Thursday!
> 
> Many, many thanks to my beautiful wife and beta [trustmeimthe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustmeimthe) for listening to me whine and moan about fest prep for like a month and a half. She is a gem. 
> 
> Also check out the rest of the [Summertime of Love Fest](https://puregaalee.tumblr.com/post/184654222850/gaalee-festival-2019every-way-i-could-love-you) on Tumblr or search #gaaleefest19!

The day’s light was just starting to fade to the low shadows of evening. Gaara stretched his arms behind himself, standing up from his seat behind the counter and letting his back crack in a satisfying way. He gave the store one final look-over before he began his closing routine. Dust mites danced lazily in the yolk of yellow light streaming through the plate glass windows. Hanging vines, dangling from every corner of the ceiling, served as makeshift curtains. Green shadows dappled the floor where the light shone through the thin skins of their leaves. 

The shop was serene at this hour, warm and full of the smell of potting soil that Gaara could never quite evict from his clothes. Sometimes he felt more comfortable here than at his own home. Here he could feel his affinity buzzing through him, surrounded by lush plantlife, the veins of their leaves more familiar to him than the veins in the back of his hand. 

He picked up the broom, ready to make one last attempt at corralling the worst of the scattered sand and soil into neat, manageable piles. He had long since given up on eradicating it entirely; there was always a thin layer of it on the stone floor, no matter how often he swept. There were times he swore it moved around when he wasn’t looking. 

The bell over the door chimed, signalling the arrival of someone to the shop. 

Gaara looked up from the counter, ready to announce the store was closed for the evening. 

Then he met the eyes of the person coming through the door. His eyes were wide, fathomless and dark, dark, dark. Gaara felt himself falling in, head barely above water and white-knuckled fingers clutching the broomstick for buoyancy. His eye caught on the man’s lanky legs, his back foot stuttering, stumbling on the threshold. The man’s hands were outstretched around a potted cactus, its spines grey and limp. 

Gaara’s fingers went numb on the broomstick. 

“Are you getting ready to close up?” the man asked. His face was sweaty, red with exertion. A bead of sweat like a lone pearl glimmered on his neckline. His mouth was drawn down into a moue of disappointment. 

“Yes,” Gaara said, because he always told the truth. “But you can come in.” He wouldn’t lie to himself about his reasons for letting the man stay past closing, but he wouldn’t linger over the matter either.

“Are you sure?” the man asked. “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Come in,” Gaara insisted. He let the broom drop from his bloodless fingers to settle against the counter with a decisive clatter. The depth of the man’s dark eyes beckoned him. He let himself submerge.

The man in the doorway looked up and _beamed_. His grin split the room in half like a knife through cold air, singing. Gaara’s fingers lit up with pins and needles. Suddenly, it was as if the shop were flooded with the full breadth of daylight, like the sun had set and risen again without Gaara’s notice and it was noon now, bright and blinding.

Gaara didn’t believe in love at first sight, but he did believe in magic. 

“Thank you so much,” the man said, before Gaara could command air into his breathless lungs. “I’m Lee, by the way.”

“Gaara,” he grunted, holding out an impatient hand to inspect the plant. 

Lee set it heavily in his hand. Gaara pretended he couldn’t feel the heat radiating off Lee’s fingertips. There was sweat all around his neckline. Gaara turned his attention to the small potted cactus, which was far less intimidating and altogether more emotionally manageable. 

It was an _Acanthocereus tetragonus_ \- a Fairy Castle cactus - its green spires dwarfed by a too-large pot. The bases of each offshoot were puffy - a sure sign of overwatering - and starting to wrinkle and pucker. Gaara tested the soil with one finger and brought it away wet. 

“I’m sorry to show up so late. I hurried across town as soon as I got done at the dojo,” Lee started to explain, while Gaara poked around the cactus’ roots. He let his affinity crackle off him, surreptitious under the soil, and felt the plant respond back - it was alive still, if barely hanging on. 

Gaara looked back up and watched Lee’s mouth moving, the words passing in one ear and out the other. A few moments under Gaara’s stare was usually enough to command anyone into silence, but Lee rambled on. 

“Your shop was the only one online that said anything about succulents, so you looked like my only option,” he prattled, failing to pause for breath. “I really can’t let this cactus die; my teacher gave it to me as a challenge. It’s supposed to teach me perseverance and moderation.”

Gaara’s lip twitched involuntarily. _Moderation, indeed._ The cactus’ soil was damp enough to kill a water lily. 

Gaara met Lee’s eyes. His eyes were still just as wide and hopeful as before, dark as pitch and midnight. His hair shone faintly, soft and impossibly smooth, like an inky halo fallen down to frame his face. He grinned again, hesitantly. His smile was just the tiniest bit crooked, one corner of his mouth ever so slightly higher than the other, wrinkling his top lip. 

“Can you fix it?”

Gaara’s finger brushed the root of the plant, down deep at the bottom of the pot, humming. The plant sang back. 

“This will take a few minutes,” Gaara said brusquely, turning his attention back to the cactus. “You can go look around.”

Gaara wasn’t sure why - maybe it was because he grew up in the desert - but his affinity, his own personal brand of _magic_, as his brother called it, had always been particularly effective on hardier plants. He could muddle through with almost any green living thing (though his sister’s calla lilies shied away from his touch), but with cacti and succulents his ability _flowed_, almost effortlessly. 

It wasn’t so much that Gaara believed in magic, it was that he knew it existed. 

He moved his fingers all around the root bed, feeling for the places where the cactus was soft and moist. He let his magic flow through his fingers, a painless vibration, and felt the roots respond in turn. He encouraged the roots to expel the excess water, head bent in concentration, urging the bloated cell walls to stand straight and rigid. 

“Why is this pot just full of rocks?” Lee called from the other side of the shop.

“Those are _lithops_,” Gaara replied without raising his head. Explaining his life’s work was almost second nature to him; he hardly had to think about his words as he focused on channeling more energy through his fingertips. “Living stones. They’re plants. Touch one.”

There was a pause, as if a hesitant hand were reaching delicately into a planter, followed by an _oooh_ of fascination. 

The corner of Gaara’s mouth twitched again. He needed to get that under control; he was starting to develop a tic. 

In his distraction, he let loose just slightly too much energy. The roots expelled the last of their excess water. The pot overflowed. Water trickled over the edge of the countertop and splattered to the floor, the sound like an electric shock. 

Gaara heard a gasp and glanced up to see Lee, feet rooted in the puddle in front of the counter, staring at him with his mouth agape.

“What are you doing?” he blurted.

Gaara withdrew his hands from the pot as quickly as he could, but his fingers still glowed faintly, as if he were clutching fireflies in both fists. Lee’s eyes traced their afterimage through the air. 

Gaara shook his hands as if it would make his trembling fingers extinguish. 

Between them, the Fairy Castle cactus stood tall and bright, its spines eagerly craning towards the residual energy sparking from Gaara’s fingers. 

Lee looked down at it, then back up at Gaara. 

“Is that- ” he started to say.

“I have an … affinity for plants,” Gaara explained. “Desert plants, specifically. I listen to them, and they listen to me.” He closed his eyes halfway in a wince. It wasn’t a secret, exactly, that people like him existed, but it wasn’t commonly discussed, either. 

“That’s amazing!” Lee exclaimed. “Gaara, you’re amazing!” He clapped his hands so loudly the air rang. 

Gaara had to blink a few times to clear his head. The glow finally faded from his hands. The air in the shop was painfully still; even the dust motes hung on tenterhooks. 

“Are you the only person who can do that?” Lee breathed into the silence.

Gaara shook his head, searching for the words. 

“No,” he said finally, the words coming slowly and with great effort, his mouth moving as if underwater. “My sister can move small objects. But my brother can’t do anything at all.”

Lee nodded along, attention rapt. Gaara had never seen someone react to his affinity with such enthusiasm; normally people were made nervous or confused by his powers. 

“My friend has a talent like that, too,” Lee said suddenly, snapping his fingers. “She can bend spoons? It’s mostly a party trick, though, I don’t think it’s very useful for anything else.”

“Mine isn’t useful for much else, either,” Gaara admitted.

“Are you kidding?” Lee gestured around the shop, his arms thrown wide. His eyes glimmered with excitement. “You can do all this!”

“That’s … mostly just traditional gardening,” Gaara objected.

“Well, you saved my plant, anyway,” Lee said, pointing at the cactus. He met Gaara’s eye and winked.

Gaara’s fingers started back up with that pins and needles feeling again. He glanced at them covertly to be sure they hadn’t taken back up glowing, but they looked normal, plain and flesh-colored as usual.

“And you?” he asked Lee, for want of anything else to say. 

Lee’s face colored, red creeping up from his neck to shade his cheeks. A sheepish hand came up to rub the back of his neck.

“Oh, no,” he said. His smile grew more crooked, and all the more charming for it. “I’m afraid I am terribly ordinary.”

Gaara watched the last of the day’s gold sunset fade from Lee’s hair. Outside, a streetlight flickered to life. Somehow, he doubted that Lee was very ordinary at all.

They stared at one another for perhaps a beat too long. The blush started to fade from Lee’s cheeks. Gaara’s hand drifted down to grip at the counter. He shifted his weight; the water he was standing in sloshed. 

“I need to put this in a new pot,” Gaara blurted. Magic, after all, could only do so much. 

“Right,” Lee said, not moving. “I’ll just, um- ” He glanced around. “Mop this up! Do you have a rag back there?”

Gaara nodded, pulling a rag from the waistband of his apron and shoving it across the counter to Lee. He tried not to think about how close their fingers were when Lee took it. He hoped Lee couldn’t see how his fingers shook. 

Gaara tromped into the back room where they kept the pots and rehomed the cactus with an alacrity he hadn’t known he possessed. 

When he returned to the front of the store, Lee was still mopping up the water (and doing a thorough job of it, too, if his little grunts of effort were anything to go by). Gaara craned his neck over the counter and tried not to stare at the tightly muscled small of his back, where his t-shirt was stuck to his skin with sweat. Surreptitiously, he swiped the last bit of water off the counter with the corner of his apron and fidgeted with the sand in the pot. 

With a great sigh of finality, Lee leapt to his feet. He held the dirtied rag out to Gaara with a flourish. 

“Your rag, monsieur,” he said, bowing with one hand at his waist. 

“You speak French?” Gaara asked. He tossed the rag into the hamper below the counter without breaking eye contact. 

The hand at Lee’s waist snapped to cover the back of his neck.

“Oh no, no, I was just- “ His nose was pink across the bridge again. “- just, making a little joke.”

“I don’t understand,” Gaara said, deadpan. “Do you think _I_ speak French?”

“No, I- “ Lee’s eyes alit on the cactus on the counter. “- ooh! What a lovely pot you chose!”

Gaara wasn’t quite ready to let the _French_ thing drop, but he followed Lee’s gaze to the vessel. It was a simple terracotta pot, wide-based and embossed around the rim with miniature turtles. Gaara had chosen it almost at random, so he told himself. If the turtles’ pouty expressions looked like a certain downturned mouth, he certainly hadn’t noticed the similarity at the time. 

“Turtles are my favorite animal,” Lee said. He grinned again; his cheekbones were cast into sharp relief by the overhead lights. “What’s yours?”

Raw panic gripped Gaara’s throat in its taloned grasp. He coughed into his fist.

“You need a porous pot to grow cacti,” he said. “The glaze on your old pot held the water in.” He tapped the back of his fingernail against the bright green ceramic of the previous pot. Its intricate lotus design seemed to look back at him accusingly. 

“The pot was also a gift from my teacher,” Lee protested.

“Your teacher doesn’t know anything about cacti,” Gaara snapped. Lee ducked his head, and Gaara felt a strange creaking in his chest, as if something old and overgrown had started to give way. He ignored it. “You’ll need to repot this one every year. It needs lots of room for its roots to grow. And I put it in a different soil mixture; yours was too loamy. It needs sandy soil. Don’t water it again until the soil is completely dry.” 

He took a deep breath, unused to saying so many words at once. When he looked down at the counter, he noticed his fingers were white and bloodless, clutching the edge of the laminate. 

When Gaara looked back up, Lee was gone. 

He blinked, eyes tracking around the shop. The bell over the front door had not rung. The shop was small, the shelves low and humble. The Fairy Tale cactus still sat in its new pot with its spires stretched towards the ceiling; the surface of the counter glistened with streaks of water still evaporating and the reflection of the fluorescent lights overhead.

He took a tentative step out from behind the counter.

“Lee?” he called hesitantly.

“Sorry, I’m over here!” 

Gaara followed the sound of his voice to the trough where he kept the _lithops_. Lee was crouched down low, examining the plants with a critical eye. 

_Lithops_ had a tendency towards obdurateness, mulish and uncompromising in their needs and in their responses to Gaara’s magic. Still, he kept a variety of them, inspired by their unyielding nature and their resistance to adversity. Their varicolored surfaces popped here and there among the pebbles in the low basin in which he kept them, growing wherever they cared to grow, cloven by their seeds and occasionally broken in twain by pale yellow flowers. Their colors were all that distinguished them from the rocks in some cases, pale purples and greyish greens punctuated with veins of dark blood red. Gaara knelt at Lee’s side and dipped his fingers into the stones. The _lithops_ pulsed back at him, their energy staid and unwavering. 

“I wanted to buy one of these,” Lee said, still staring intently. He looked back up at Gaara suddenly. That crooked smile cracked at the corner of his lips. 

Gaara’s chest twinged. He rubbed his breastbone. 

“Would I be able to use the same soil for the cactus and for one of these?” 

Lee’s finger traced the sulcus between one of the plants’ two hemispheres. 

Gaara shook his head mutely. 

Lee lifted a questioning eyebrow. 

“They need a rockier soil,” Gaara finally creaked. His lips and teeth were cold and painfully numb, as if he had just bitten through ice. He looked back at the living stones and plunged his hands deeper into their trough. 

“Where can I get that?” Lee asked, seemingly unperturbed by Gaara’s temporary aphonia. 

“Here,” Gaara replied, making steady eye contact with a particularly vibrant specimen of _hookeri_. “I make it myself.”

Out of the corner of Gaara’s eye, Lee clenched his fist. “Incredible!” He clapped Gaara’s shoulder. 

The sudden touch hit worse than a suckerpunch. Gaara’s whole skeleton vibrated. He jarred backwards. The _lithops_ grumbled at the loss of contact.

Lee didn’t seem to notice. “You’re a man of many talents!” he said. 

It took Gaara long moment to process the words, reading them off Lee’s lips between the ringing of his ears. 

“It’s just dirt,” he said finally.

Lee laughed. 

If Gaara had found his voice too loud, his laugh was even louder. The still air of the shop rang with it; the glass of the windows seemed to tremble. Gaara bit the inside of his cheek until it hurt.

“I’ll take a bag of ‘just dirt’ and one of these, then,” Lee said with a nod of finality. 

Gaara stood and brushed the sand from his trouser legs with shaky hands. His legs felt disconnected from his body, but he found the wherewithal to stumble to the back room for a pot, lumbering like a ghost with its feet on backwards. 

When the door to the back room swung shut behind him, he stopped. He pressed the back of his head to the door, fumbling palms gripping at the wood. His chest shook like a rabbit on the run from an owl. His breath scintillated from icy lips until he forced himself to breathe manually - _in, out_ \- and willed himself to stand straight. Even the familiar textures of the room - red clay and terracotta pots lining the walls on crooked wooden shelves, hung inexpertly by his brother and bowing under the weight of their burden - didn’t soothe him. 

He closed his eyes and inhaled. The scent of sand, sap and dry clay, old seeds crushed to dust and wood made warm in the sun and cooling in the night air flooded into his lungs. He breathed out and let his shoulders drop. He counted the lines of wood grain under his fingertips, clenched and unclenched his toes in the foam of his sneakers and reminded himself he was still tethered to the earth. 

When he opened his eyes, he saw that the cracked glass face of clock on the back wall showed it was half an hour after closing. 

He grabbed the nearest pot to hand and threw the door wide. 

Lee was still squatting near the _lithops_, stroking the surface of one like a cherished pet.

“Do you want to come home with me?” Gaara heard him murmur as he approached. 

“They don’t care if you talk to them,” Gaara blurted out. He pulled a trowel from his apron pocket and set about unearthing the lithops Lee clearly favored, a speckled magenta _optica_. The metal sunk in between the stones with the screech of a gravedigger’s shovel. The roots hastened out of the way of his abrupt movements. 

“Really?” Lee cocked his head. “But you said-”

“They might listen, but they don’t care what you have to say. _Lithops_ have a mind of their own.” Gaara began arranging stones and soil around the bottom of the pot. 

“Stubborn,” Lee said, tapping his chin. “I like a man with a strong will!” He gave the plant a gentle pat. 

“Bull-headed, more like,” Gaara replied as he seated the plant in its new home. He thrust it out towards Lee. The plant crackled at him in protest. He let his fingers flash across the surface of the pot in warning. _Behave._

Lee cradled the pot near his face and cooed, ignorant of the heated exchange. 

Gaara stood up, brushing the worst of the dirt off his hands. He buffed his fingernails against his apron. It wouldn’t rid them of all the soil, but it would at least keep it out of the register keys. 

“Bags of soil are over there,” he gestured to the corner, where 40 pound burlap sacks sat neatly stacked atop one another. “You’ll want a bag of Type 2 for repotting the _Acanthocereus_ and a bag of Type 5 for the _Lithops_.”

Lee nodded gamely and sprung to his feet effortlessly. In an instant, he had a bag slung over each shoulder, the _lithops_ pot still tenderly clutched in his outstretched hand. 

“I have a cart,” Gaara explained drily. 

“Don’t worry about it!” Lee replied. He started walking to the register, his step unexpectedly surefooted. 

“Those each weigh as much as a toddler.”

Lee just laughed again. The sound rippled down Gaara’s spine, and he shivered. 

Lee kept the bags hefted on each shoulder all throughout the process of Gaara ringing him up and foisting a number of instructional pamphlets on him. His smile didn’t waver once, even as he contorted to retrieve his wallet from his back pocket and to find somewhere to hold the many glossy pamphlets. 

“Do you need help carrying everything to your car?” Gaara asked, once the transaction was concluded and Lee was balancing the cactus in one hand and the _lithops_ in the other.

“Oh, no,” Lee said, winking once again. “I walked here!”

Gaara’s eyes widened. He waited for Lee to laugh or indicate he was making a joke. The laughter never came. 

“Um,” he said.

Lee glanced down at his watch and let out an exaggerated gasp. 

“I’m so sorry!” he shouted. Gaara winced. “I had no idea it was so late! I’ll get out of your hair.”

Gaara trailed him to the door and stared dumbly as Lee maneuvered it open with a foot and one pinky. It didn’t occur to him to offer to help. 

“Thank you for all your help!” Lee called. He started to make his way down the quiet side street, his hair and teeth flashing between the pools of light from the streetlamps. 

Gaara locked the door behind him. Before he drew the blinds, he looked up and down the street. There wasn’t a single car parked anywhere. 

He pulled the cord. The blinds fell. With a flick of the lightswitch, the shop went dim but for the muted gold seeping under the closed back room door. 

And that was that, Gaara thought.


	2. Chlorophytum comosum (Spider Plant)

Less than a week later, the bell over the shop door rang at closing time again. Wednesdays were inventory days, and Gaara’s shoulders dragged with exhaustion. It had been pouring rain all day, and the chill had seeped in to settle as a stiffness in Gaara’s shoulders. He had just finished jotting the last of his orders in tiny, crabbed cursive into his notebook when he heard the chime. 

“We’re closed,” he called, without looking up at the door.

“I’m sorry!” said a loud, familiar voice. “I’ll come back another day.”

Gaara’s head shot up on his neck.

“Oh. It’s you.” 

Gaara still didn’t believe in love at first sight, but it seemed the universe was giving him a chance to take a second look. 

Lee offered an eager wave with the hand that wasn’t cradling a large, gray pot, its edges overhung with pale green tendrils. Lee’s hair was plastered to his face by the rain; his thin tank-top clung between the muscles of his chest. His face was split by an apologetic grin: half a cringe and half a blush. 

Gaara swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat.

“Come in,” he said, despite himself.

“I don’t want to cause you any trouble- “

“It’s no trouble. Come in before you bring the storm in with you.”

Lee slipped inside. The glass door clattered shut behind him and muted the noise of the rain outside. A hush descended over the shop. Lightning flashed and lit the street; for a moment, Lee was backlit in white. The hairs stood up on the back of Gaara’s arms as the barometric pressure plummeted. Thunder rolled through the air moments later, loud enough to rattle the pots on their crooked shelves and set Gaara’s already tense shoulders on edge.

“Thank you so much for taking the time- I don’t want you to think you need to stay past closing just for me,” Lee babbled as he made his way to the counter. “I really can come back some other day.”

Gaara let his eyes scan up Lee’s sodden body. His tennis shoes were soaked through. Rivulets of water dripped from the hem of his shorts and trailed down his bare calves. Gaara could make out the outline of his abdominal muscles through his thin shirt as he set the drenched plant on the counter with a _thud_. Droplets of rain clung to his eyelashes and the corners of his parted lips. A pool of water had started to form around the base of the pot when Gaara finally spoke.

“Did you walk all the way here again?”

Lee shrugged, a now familiar blush turning his face carnation pink.

“It’s good exercise! And I ran, actually. It’s supposed to help you stay drier.” 

Gaara glanced skeptically at the lines of water curling down Lee’s neck to settle in the hollow of his throat, then down at the saturated spider plant on the counter in front of him.

“Clearly an effective strategy,” he said drily. His fingertips grazed the browned edges of the spider plant’s leaves. It was a handsome specimen of _Vittatum_, its thinly striped leaves starting to outgrow the confines of its pot. It hadn’t sprouted pups yet, but when Gaara let his fingers spark off the base of the plant, where the offshoots would grow, he could tell it was only a matter of time. Despite the brown spots flecking a few of the leaves, the plant was in far better shape than Lee’s cactus. Gaara idly scraped a few of the scales off with a fingernail, satisfied at the color of the flesh beneath. He sent a reassuring pulse of energy to the plant and waited for its timid response before retrieving his shears from beneath the counter.

“I don’t know how you managed to overwater a cactus and underwater a spider plant at the same time,” he said, as he took to trimming the brown edges of the leaves. 

Lee’s blush deepened to the dark red of aster flowers. 

“Ah, it’s from my guest room,” he stammered. “I don’t have too many guests over, so it’s easy to forget about it.”

“You keep it by the window?” Gaara asked. He brushed a pile of brown trimmings into the trashcan and turned the plant to begin working on its less-affected far side. 

Lee nodded. 

“It gets the best light there.” 

“Don’t. You’re burning it. Keep it a few feet from the window, or at least turn it every few weeks.” He held up a palmful of the brown trimmings. “When you start to see these, you need to remove them, or the plant won’t grow. You can cut them off or just use your fingers.” 

“Hold on just one moment!” Lee held up his index finger. “I would like to take notes!”

He pulled out his phone and began hen-pecking at the screen with one finger, scowling with intense concentration. Gaara was surprised the phone even worked, soaked as Lee was. As Lee typed, the air conditioner in the shop cut on and began whirring. Tiny goosebumps broke out on Lee’s bronzed arms and a shiver made his shoulders tremble. 

“Um,” Gaara said, “do you want to … dry off, by the way?”

Lee’s face morphed into a relieved smile. 

“I would be so grateful!”

Gaara bent beneath the counter and returned with a pile of cleaning rags. 

“Sorry we don’t have anything bigger. We don’t get a lot of- “ Saying ‘buff, water-logged handsome men’ would probably be inappropriate. “- big water.” Embarrassment flooded Gaara’s face. 

“Thank you very much!” Lee said, seemingly unperturbed, grabbing the top cloth from the stack and beginning to wipe the dampness from his forehead. 

Gaara looked down at the counter for a moment, hoping the heat in his cheeks would subside. 

“We have a-” he began, looking back up. 

The blush flooded back full-force.

Lee had taken his soaked shirt off and had it hanging from one hand, while the other toweled dry his bare chest and stomach. His muscles were so well-defined they looked as if they had been cast in iron. He appeared like a statue of a hero of ancient myth come to life. 

Gaara’s mouth dropped open. Suddenly, he found his pulse racing. He was so light-headed he could no longer feel his feet on the ground.

Lee paused in his motions, looking up at Gaara with his eyebrows raised in question. His shirt dripped quietly on the shop floor. 

“We- we have a … bathroom,” Gaara mumbled over the blood rushing in his ears. “If you-”

The flush on Lee’s face spread down to his shoulders and the top of his chest. He clutched the rag to his chest in a sudden display of modesty.

“Oh, where- ?” He gulped. The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed.

Gaara pointed mutely to the door labeled, **Restrooms are for Employees Only**, trying desperately to look anywhere but at the path of Lee’s rapidly growing blush. 

“I’ll just-” Lee snatched the whole stack of rags from the counter and held them in front of him like a flimsy, cotton shield. “Um. Thanks! Be right back!”

The bathroom door slammed closed behind him, and Gaara heard the running of the cold water spigot.

Gaara glanced around for his shears, focusing in on the first thing that shone on the counter. It was not his scissors. In his haste, Lee had left his phone on the counter. The lock screen was a picture of Lee pressed cheek-to-cheek with a girl with long brown hair. 

The heat in Gaara’s face immediately cooled. He pinched his thigh through the seam of his pants to keep himself from cursing aloud. As he stared at it, the screen dimmed on its own. 

Gaara trimmed the remainder of the plant’s brown edges with ruthless efficiency, ignoring the spider plant’s tiny pulses of alarm when he traded his shears for his own jagged nails. Task complete, he jabbed his shears back into the drawer with force. He tore off a strip of register tape and jotted down a few words, so hard that the pen broke through the glossy paper and streaked the counter. He rubbed at the spot furiously, then, remembering himself, touched an apologetic hand to the spider plant’s shorn edges, sending flickers of reassurance down the plant’s trembling leaves. 

Lee returned as Gaara was scraping aside a bit of the dirt packed around the roots, his shirt back on (though wrinkled from being wrung out) and holding a handful of damp cleaning rags. 

“I wasn’t sure where to put these, so I-”

“I’ll take them,” Gaara interrupted him, snapping his fingers and holding his hand out. Lee’s fingers dragged over his as he handed the rags over. Gaara jerked his hands back and threw the soiled cloths in the hamper with too much force. 

“I wrote down a website,” Gaara said, pushing the scrap of register tape across the counter roughly, “about spider plant care. So you don’t need to type up everything I say.”

“Thank you,” Lee said, and laid a gentle hand on the back of Gaara’s retreating wrist. Gaara pulled his hand back and shoved it in his apron pocket impulsively. Through the canvas, his nails dug into the skin of his thigh. 

“You need to repot this,” he said sharply. “It’s going to split the pot soon.”

Lee studied Gaara’s face with quiet, tense confusion for a moment, then, with an abrupt shake of his head, replaced the look with another irrepressible grin. 

“I had no idea my little plant was so strong!” he said with a jolly laugh. He patted the plain gray pot as if it were a child that had performed some particularly impressive feat, and not a plant that had simply grown pot-bound. 

Gaara lifted the plant and spun to march into the back room. 

He spent a few moments brushing sand from the surface of his workbench. When the door didn’t swing open behind him, he called over his shoulder: “Are you coming or not?”

Lee came through the door like a shot, stumbling over his own feet. 

“Sorry, I didn’t realize I was allowed- “

“I’ll show you how to do this,” Gaara grunted. “So you don’t have to ask for help next time.”

Lee fumbled his phone into his pocket with clumsy hands. 

“Yes, of course.” He gave Gaara a weak grin that didn’t quite meet his eyes. “So I can do it by myself.”

“Exactly.” Gaara pulled a trowel from under the workbench. “Grab me one of those.” He pointed with the tip of the trowel to a stack of large, heavy plastic pots with holes punched through the bottom, then began attempting to carefully separate the plant’s roots from the edge of its current pot with his fingers. 

“These?” Lee asked, lifting one and passing it over. “Will it be okay in plastic? When I got it from the store it was in that clay pot.”

“Then that store was worthless,” Gaara said, setting the plastic pot down in a drainage tray. The roots were so pot-bound that there was scarcely enough room for his fingers. He sent out a few flickers of golden energy; the roots writhed, but there was nowhere for them to go. “How attached are you to this pot?”

“Not at all,” Lee said. “It’s just what it came in.”

“Great.” Gaara smacked the base of the pot with his trowel. The pot split down the side, soil spilling onto the pitted wood of the workbench. The spider plant tipped onto its side, its roots a nest of white tubers in the exact shape of the pot. “See how thick those roots are?” 

Lee leaned over Gaara’s shoulder to prod the knotted cluster. 

“That’s what helps them hold water, which is how yours lived so long without proper watering. It’s also what makes them break clay pots when they grow too large.” Gaara tapped the split pot with his trowel and produced a hollow ringing sound. “Your pot was probably already starting to split right where it cracked. It won’t be able to break the plastic.” 

“I had no idea,” Lee said quietly, voice hushed with awe. “They said at the store it was a good beginner plant.”

“It is. It takes a lot of skill to kill one of these.”

The back of Lee’s neck turned red and he rubbed it, his elbow brushing Gaara’s shoulder. It was then Gaara noticed how close they were standing. He cleared his throat, shifting a few inches to the right. 

“Now we need to clear the excess dirt from the roots.” Gaara began working his fingers in between the larger tubers, freeing them from their clumped formation and allowing the tendrils to hang free. After liberating a few, he passed the plant to Lee. “You try it.”

Lee took to the task gamely, his tongue peeking out from between his pursed lips, eyes narrowed as he diligently worked his fingers into the root ball. He dug between each intersecting root, carefully extracting every grain of soil.

“Stop,” Gaara prompted him. “It doesn’t need to be perfect. Just get the biggest roots out of the way.”

“Oh.” Lee paused his motions. His tongue retreated back behind his teeth. He shook the plant gently, and the rest of the dirt fell to the work table. 

“That’s good enough.” Gaara leaned across Lee’s chest to bring the larger pot closer to the both of them. He noticed as he drew back that the ruddiness still hadn’t faded from Lee’s neck. Hopefully Lee wasn’t getting a cold from running in the rain. 

The motions of repotting - carefully filling the new pot with the right amount and type of soil, gently reseating the plant in its new home, making sure the plant was free of debris and freshly watered to prevent shock - were comforting and routine to Gaara. It helped, too, that Lee was a diligent student, asking thoughtful questions about the type of soil, the watering schedule, and the best times to repot. Gaara found himself settling back in to a place of stability and familiarity. With his fingers deep in the soil, his heart rate slowed to a gentle thrum. The plant’s energy responded to him, too, little flickers of gold bouncing back and forth between his fingertips and the roots. 

“You’re a really good teacher,” Lee said, once Gaara was dusting the soil from the workbench and into a trash can. “You should teach gardening classes here or something!”

Gaara leveled him with a dubious expression, looking around the untidy workspace. Old pots were stacked haphazardly in the sink and dirt flecked the backsplash. The worktable’s grain was inlaid with years of built up sediment and bore deep scratches from errant handrakes. Even the overhead light was fuzzed with ancient dust, leaving the air stuffy. 

“I mean, with a little elbow grease, this could be a great classroom!” Lee exclaimed. He walked over to the sink and began rinsing his hands. “And some mopping, probably. The floor’s kind of … crunchy.”

“That’s from the sand,” Gaara reminded him. 

“Oh, right, you said you make your own soil!” Lee looked around for a roll of paper towels and, finding none, wiped his hands on his still-damp shorts. “Do you do that in here, too?”

“Out back.” Gaara scuffed his shoe through some of the loose dirt. “It always finds its way inside, though.”

“I bet people would even want to learn about how you do that! There’s a ton of gardening enthusiasts here, plus the kids at the community college…. It’s so impressive how you know how to do everything by hand even though you can magic your way around it. You would be so great at it!” 

Gaara looked down at his own dirt-crusted nails, still glowing faintly gold, then back at Lee’s face. His hair had grown fluffy in the humidity and the hairs of his thick brows were still disorderly from being roughed up with the hand towel. He looked ruggedly disheveled, that crooked grin making its way back onto his face. Gaara blanched. 

“I’m not a people person,” he muttered.

“Really?” From anyone else, Gaara would have assumed that response to be sarcasm, but Lee’s mouth was agape with genuine surprise. “You’ve been so friendly to me!” 

“You have an odd definition of ‘friendly’,” was all Gaara said. He hefted the new pot into Lee’s muscular arms. This time, their hands didn’t touch. 

“Don’t worry about paying me for the pot,” Gaara said gruffly, walking Lee past the register and back to the entrance of the store. “Since I broke yours, I owe you a replacement.”

Gaara unlocked the glass front door. Outside, the rain had lightened to a faint drizzle. 

“What?” Lee said. “No, please- “ He dug around in his pocket and retrieved a few damp dollar bills and thrust them towards Gaara. 

Gaara ignored them, looking up at the sky, where a few final clouds were steadily rolling to the east. 

“Do you need a ride home?” he asked, despite his own better judgment. “It’s still raining.”

Lee glanced through the door, then looked back at Gaara’s face. He studied him for a moment, expression indecipherable. Gaara crossed his arms and looked to his side at the floor. 

“I couldn’t impose,” Lee said finally, lopsided grin still quirking the corners of his mouth. “Besides, it’s not that far, and the rain isn’t too bad”

Gaara exhaled sharply through his nose. 

“You won’t need to water the spider plant for another couple weeks after walking it home in this.”

Lee gave him a thumbs up, eyes flashing in the streetlights as he stepped out into the falling rain. 

“Thanks again!” he called. “Sorry for troubling you!”

Gaara locked the door behind him. 

On his way home, he studied the sidewalks through his foggy car windows for a lone figure running, pot in hand. He tried not to be disappointed when all he passed were old women with their umbrellas.


	3. Phalaenopsis blume (Moth Orchid)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday, everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. If you're in the path of Hurrican Dorian, I hope you are staying safe and have plenty of bottled water and batteries.

“Who put you in charge of an _orchid_?”

It was past closing time again, the front half of the store already locked up and the lights out, the blinds long since drawn against the frigid night air and the windows gently fogging behind them from the shop’s humidity. Gaara stood across from Lee in the crowded back room, the fuschia blooms of a _phalaenopsis_ orchid breaking the space between them on Gaara’s dusty workbench. 

Lee looked down at his hands, which were still clutched around the base of the plant’s pot, then back up at Gaara with his eyebrows canted upward in a pleading expression.

“Um, well- I- “

Gaara’s fingers were already halfway to the bottom of the pot, digging through the mixture of soft bark and sphagnum moss to check the moisture ratio. The plant cringed away from his probing digits prissily, radiating offense. 

“This plant is too advanced for you,” Gaara griped, though his agitation was less with Lee and more with the troublesome plant flinching beneath his hands. “Whoever convinced you to take it on is either an idiot or trying to sell you something.”

The discomfited look on Lee’s face intensified; his eyes searched the room desperately for some escape from Gaara’s pinpoint stare and found no relief. 

“It’s not _mine_,” Lee protested lamely. “Tenten asked me to watch it for her while she was out of town. But then its leaves started getting all limp and leathery, and then I noticed the spots, and the roots are- “

“Who’s Tenten?” Gaara interrupted him. He heard the harshness in his own tone and bit his lip reflexively. 

“Oh!” Lee’s hand jumped to his jacket pocket (for once, he was at least _somewhat_ appropriately dressed for the weather, though his bright orange sweatpants left much to be desired in the arena of fashion) and dug out his phone. He presented it to Gaara, the same picture still on the lock screen: Lee with his arm around a brown-haired girl, beaming as if he had just been handed some wonderful prize. “She’s my best friend! This is us at our last tournament.” 

Gaara’s eyes widened fractionally. His world shifted a half-step out of time, jarring on its axis. He shoved the phone back towards Lee and refocused on the orchid’s bright blooms. 

“Oh,” he grunted, pretending not to care. “I thought she was your … sister.” 

Lee threw his head back and laughed, open-mouthed, the sound cutting the warm stillness of the back room. Gaara’s hand twitched within the plant’s root bed; the plant issued a little flicker of annoyance, and he responded with a chiding flash, still staring at the exposed column of Lee’s throat. 

Lee wiped at his eyes with exaggerated mirth. 

“Sorry,” he said, “it’s just that most people think we’re dating! I need to get a shirt that says ‘All Bi Myself’ or something.” He gave a goofy grin, tongue poking from the corner of his mouth. 

“What,” Gaara said flatly.

“‘All _Bi_ Myself’,” Lee repeated, putting heavy emphasis on the second word. “Get it? ‘Bi’? B-I. Because I’m bi! … and single,” he added, hurriedly. 

Gaara’s stomach started doing somersaults in his abdomen. He couldn’t stop staring at Lee’s grinning face, his perfect, straight white teeth, the arc of his wide eyebrows. 

He didn’t realize his entire hands were glowing until the plant gave a minute flicker of alarm. He looked down to see the plant had grown, several new blossoms sprouting along its length. 

He broke eye contact and shook his hands briskly, willing the flaring light away. Lee watched him with a puzzled look on his face. 

“Wow,” he murmured, “that’s so cool! So the orchid was really sick, huh?”

Gaara coughed awkwardly into one still-shining hand. 

“No,” he said, despite himself. “The orchid’s fine. Just a little thirsty. Grab a cup of water.”

Lee returned with the water in his hand, his face a mask of growing concern.

“But the spots?” he said. “And the roots? They looked just like the roots on my spider plant when you said it was pot-bound.”

Gaara gently poured the water over the base of the plant, testing the soil until it was the perfect level of saturation and all the excess had drained away. The plant gave a haughty little flicker of thanks. He suppressed a roll of his eyes. 

“The spots are normal,” he replied. His eyes tracked over Lee’s face, his nose with its smattering of freckles scrunched inquisitively. “They’re part of the plant’s complexion. Like your freckles,” he added in an undertone. 

Lee brought one self-conscious hand to his cheek. A faint blush started to climb his neck, washing his freckles out in spreading red. 

“A few air roots are typical for orchids,” Gaara continued, flicking one of the plant’s exposed white roots. The orchid bristled with offense, its leaves straightening. “You’re paranoid because you keep killing plants.”

Lee’s face was fully saturated with red now, his freckles gone invisible. 

“Oh,” he said. “Well, thank you anyway. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gaara replied, passing the pot to Lee and shrugging into his coat. He flicked the lights off and the back room fell into darkness. He navigated to the door by memory and the faint sodium yellow light trickling through the frame from the street lamps outside, Lee so close on his heels that he could feel warm breath on the back of his neck. He cracked the door open to a gust of brisk air and shivered. 

“I’m driving you home,” Gaara said, in a voice that brooked no argument. 

Lee tilted his head to the side, studying Gaara’s face carefully, his eyes shadowed by the overhead light. His fingers fidgeted with the hem of his lightweight jacket. 

“If you’re sure … “ he said finally, a curious quirk to his eyebrows.

“I won’t let you freeze that orchid on your way home after I spent so much time on it.”

“Of course,” Lee said, but there was an odd lilt to his voice. “Taking good care of the orchid is very important.” 

They drove to Lee’s apartment in silence, punctuated only by Lee’s murmured directions and the clicking rumble of the heater. Despite the warm air blowing across the cabin space, Gaara’s fingers on the gear shift felt icy cold. 

“Where did you learn to drive stick?” Lee asked, as they turned down a quiet residential street, flashes of light rippling through the car’s windshield. 

Gaara’s stomach churned nervously. He dug his nails into the soft fabric over the stick shift. His foot stuttered on the clutch and the engine stuttered.

“My brother taught me,” he said tersely. 

“I’m jealous. I always wished I had siblings.” Lee kicked his long legs out under the dashboard, wiggling his feet idly. Gaara commanded his eyes back to the road, but found his attention straying to Lee’s broad hands, picking at the seam of his sweatpants. “Are you the oldest?”

“Youngest.” Gaara’s heart stammered in his chest. He breathed quickly through his nose, feeling as if he were running out of air. 

“But you’re so mature!” 

Gaara coughed in surprise, something that had the flavor of a laugh escaping his startled throat. He raised an eyebrow. 

“No, really!” Lee protested. He extended his hands in front of him in a defensive gesture. “I mean, you have your own business, you’re so smart and well-informed, and you’re super level-headed!” 

Gaara agreed with barely one of those things, but he didn’t have time to respond as they pulled into Lee’s apartment complex parking lot.

“Here’s me!” Lee called. He bounded out of the car as soon as Gaara came to a stop, then quickly spun around and stuck his head back in the open door. “Thanks again!” he said, his grin only half-visible between the orchid’s bright flowers. 

“I’ll see you again soon, I’m sure,” Gaara replied. “As long as you keep killing plants.”

Lee just laughed and turned around with a gentle wave over his shoulder. Gaara idled in the parking lot until he saw Lee enter a doorway filled with warm, golden light, and watched him close the door behind him. 

The car seemed suddenly much colder.


	4. Lithops optica (Living Stone)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to Skuun for literally predicting the contents of this chapter.

“I met your secret admirer,” Temari drawled as she folded a printed receipt into neat quarters. 

Gaara knew it had been a mistake to ask her to watch the shop for the day while he went to the dentist. He should have just closed the store entirely, but he couldn’t afford an entire day of missed income. He clenched his fists in the pockets of his hoodie. 

The register drawer clattered shut and Gaara startled. He looked up to find Temari standing with her finger extended, surrounded in a pale purple aura, the daily total receipt hovering in front of his nose. He snatched it from the air and stuffed it into his pocket. 

“You know who I’m talking about, right?” Temari prodded him, a sly smile growing on her face. “Tall, muscley guy? Big eyes, bigger eyebrows? He came in to get your advice on one of those gross rock things.”

“They’re _lithops_,” Gaara corrected her petulantly. “And I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Really?” Temari arched an eyebrow. “Because if he’s some creepy stalker, I have his credit card information. I’m not scared to track him down and kick his ass.”

“Don’t,” Gaara said abruptly.

Temari let out a ‘_Hah!_’ of triumph. “So you _do_ know him.” 

Gaara pulled his hood up and tightened the strings until the thick fabric obscured most of his face. Temari flicked a finger and the lights in the shop went out. They began to walk to the door. 

“Yes,” Gaara admitted grudgingly. He began digging in his pockets for his keys. He felt a mess, his mouth cottony and his t-shirt splattered with toothpaste. The area around his lips and jaw was still partly numb. 

“Don’t you want to know what he said?” Temari teased him. 

“No,” Gaara grunted. “I want you to leave me alone.” He swung the door wide, glaring at Temari over his shoulder as he walked out of the shop … and directly into a broad, muscled chest. 

Gaara stumbled, and warm hands caught his shoulders and propped him up. He found himself staring into Lee’s wide, worried eyes. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. Behind him, Gaara heard Temari snicker.

“Fine,” Gaara hissed through his suddenly dry throat. His shoulders twitched uncomfortably, and Lee’s hands fell to his side. Gaara noticed that one hand was holding the tiny pot containing Lee’s new _lithops_, looking a little gray and worse for wear. 

“I’m sorry,” Lee blurted. “Your sister said you might be back at the end of the day, but I didn’t realize you’d be closed-”

“It’s fine,” Temari lied smoothly, stepping around Gaara with a swan’s grace. “Gaara was just walking me out, weren’t you, Gaara?”

Gaara stared at his sister in wide-eyed alarm. Over Lee’s shoulder, she gave him a little _go on_ gesture.

“I-” He gulped. “Yes. Come in.”

“You boys have fun,” Temari said with a salacious wink and a fan of her fingers over her shoulder. 

The door shut behind them with a hush. Gaara was suddenly very aware of the back of his head where his hair was smashed down from laying in the dentist’s chair. He tugged his hoodie strings a bit tighter.

“Are you cold?” Lee asked, a gentle hand coming to rest on Gaara’s upper arm. The softness of the touch almost burned him. 

“Yes,” Gaara said. It was halfway the truth. 

“You’re pretty cold-natured, huh?” Lee said. _And you burn brighter than the sun,_ Gaara didn’t say. “I guess you didn’t grow up around here.”

Gaara shook his head silently. He crossed his arms over his chest, sheltering the cracks within from Lee’s gentle questioning. What was it about those wide eyes that made him want to abandon all his carefully constructed privacy and bare his open heart?

“I’m from the desert,” he said through senseless lips. 

“No wonder you’re so good with the cactuses!” Lee beamed. “Speaking of, my _lithops_...” 

Gaara’s eyes dropped to the plant held in Lee’s cupped palms, suddenly remembering the purpose of Lee’s visit. This wasn’t a social call - Lee wasn’t here for him, but for his expertise. He nodded and stalked to the counter, unwilling to let Lee breach further into his inner world tonight by letting him in the back room. 

There was a small LED light on a hinge overhanging the counter, with a magnifying lens below it. Gaara snapped this on as he pulled the plant towards him, gently probing at its thick leaves. 

The blue-tinged light uplit Lee’s face and glowed through his irises. Through the magnifying glass, his skin was a dusky gold, smooth and perfectly poreless. Gaara’s fingers twitched reflexively towards his legs to pinch himself, but he stilled them. It was acutely unfair, the way that Lee always looked so handsome. And here stood Gaara in a dirty sweatshirt and his brother’s baggy jeans, two sizes too large, looking like he had just rolled off the couch. 

“I like this casual look on you,” Lee said. 

Gaara’s fingers sparked off the plant’s clubs; the _lithops_ studiously ignored him. His breath was stuck in his throat, the numbness of his jaw spreading to his tongue. 

“It’s overwatered,” he muttered. 

Lee’s head sunk dramatically into his hands. 

“How do I keep doing this?” he groaned. “I try to be so attentive to them!”

“You’re attentive to the wrong things,” Gaara said quietly. He pushed a bit of energy at the plant, a bit more insistently, and the tray beneath its pot filled with water. The _lithops_ rumbled grumpily at him. “Succulents need space and a light hand. Too much, too fast overwhelms them.”

Lee nodded, attention rapt. 

“They evolved to grow in harsh conditions,” Gaara continued, “so they only have so much storage.” Suddenly, an arc of bright pain lanced up Gaara’s jaw. He slapped his hand over the painful spot, knocking his hood back. 

“Gaara!” Lee gasped, one hand extended over the counter to hold his wrist. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Gaara breathed through another sharp bite of pain. “Went to the dentist today. Painkiller’s wearing off.”

Lee’s brows wrinkled with concern; his eyes lingered on Gaara’s face.

“What,” Gaara barked.

“Nothing, it’s just- “ Lee blinked hard. “- your hair looks nice like that. It’s stylish.”

“I didn’t comb it because I was going to be lying in a dentist’s chair for hours,” Gaara said flatly. “That’s stylish?”

Lee shook his head, a wry smile gracing his lips. 

“You should go home,” he said. His hand fell to the counter and clasped around the base of the _lithops_. 

Gaara nodded reluctantly and retrieved his keys from his pocket. They jingled softly as he palmed them, other hand still clutching his aching jaw. 

“You’re driving?” 

Gaara grunted an affirmation. 

“You probably shouldn’t drive in that condition, especially if they gave you drugs … “

“It’s just a local anaesthetic,” Gaara said tightly. “Besides, I can’t leave my car here overnight.” 

Lee’s eyes flicked to the keys in Gaara’s hand, then up to his expression of knotted pain. 

“I could drive you?” he offered. 

“You don’t know where I live,” Gaara objected.

“You can give me directions!”

“You’ll have to walk home after.”

“Sounds like great exercise!” Lee said, grinning, and held out his hand, palm up. “Please,” he said, his mouth suddenly dropping into a pout. “I insist. It’s the least I can do, after all you’ve done to help me.”

Something about the implied reciprocity of that statement rubbed Gaara the wrong way; he bristled like a cat being pet backwards. Nonetheless, he dropped the keys into Lee’s outstretched hand. 

“I assume you know how to drive stick,” he said drily. 

“It’s been a while, but I’m sure I remember the basics!” Lee chirped. “It’s just like riding a bicycle!”

* * *

The drive to Gaara’s house was harrowing. Lee’s foot was much too heavy on the clutch, and the car lurched and complained whenever he shifted gears, juddering Gaara’s already achey frame. 

“Sorry,” Lee said for the fifth time, as they jerked away from a stop sign. “I don’t remember it being so hard!”

“Don’t apologize for doing me a favor,” Gaara replied. The car ground to a halt at a stoplight and Gaara took the brief reprieve to rub his jaw, where the pain was starting to fade to a dull throb. He needed something to distract himself. “Give me your phone.”

Lee didn’t question Gaara’s need for it, completely trusting as he unlocked the phone and dropped it into Gaara’s outstretched hand. Gaara navigated to the calendar app just as the light turned green and the car screeched up the street. His eyes lingered for a long moment on the many pre-programmed reminders of kung fu practices. Well, that explained why Lee was in such good shape, he thought, before he began tapping away.

In a few minutes, they stuttered to a stop in Gaara’s driveway. The engine sighed as Lee turned off the car and handed Gaara his keys back. He made to open the door. 

“Wait,” Gaara stopped him. He held up the phone, whose calendar was now littered with varicolored reminders. “I made you a watering schedule.”

Lee took the phone in both hands, eyes glowing with delight. He tapped the screen and scrolled through the various appointments, eyes widening as he did so. 

“Wow,” he breathed. “It’s so thorough! You even included how much water to give them!”

Gaara tore his eyes away from Lee’s awed grin to stare over the dashboard. “I just did the three plants you’ve brought in,” he said. “If you have more, tell me, and I’ll add those in too.”

Lee rubbed the back of his neck, deadening the phone screen. The car settled into dimness, the only light the bare bulb over Gaara’s stoop some yards away and the moon overhead through the windshield. Everything was saturated in soft greys, from the dark of Lee’s eyes to the rosy blush rising on his freckled cheeks. 

“Thank you,” Lee said, as quietly as Gaara had ever heard him speak, “for everything.”

He turned to look at Gaara, a shadow of a thought flickering across his face and then settling into a gentle smile. His mouth was parted just so, a patch of dark hovering between his lips. Gaara noticed after a moment that his body had crossed the midline of the console, leaning into Gaara’s space in the passenger seat. 

Gaara’s body tilted forward as if magnetized, drawn to the black-hole pull of Lee’s eyes. He crossed the event horizon with a sigh, tilting his head and letting his eyes flutter closed. Lee’s hand came up to brush across his cheek.

Searing, icy pain shot down Gaara’s jawline. He winced away. Lee withdrew his hand with a gasp. 

“Sorry,” Lee blurted, voice urgent with apology. “I forgot-”

“Goodnight, Lee,” Gaara said, hand fumbling on the cold metal of the door latch. He stumbled upright into his driveway and slammed the passenger door behind him. Something inside his chest shattered, the pain worse than the burning in his mouth. 

Lee’s broad back retreated down the end of the driveway without another word. 

“Get home safe,” Gaara called, spurred on by some impulse he couldn’t name. 

Lee’s teeth caught the light when he turned to smile, a flash of white on the darkened street. Then, he turned away and started to run, the soft tapping of his sneakers on the pavement the only sound in the still night as he vanished into the black.


	5. Ficus benjamina (Rubber Plant)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday everyone! 
> 
> I'm hoping to run a GaaLee/LeeGaa Holiday Exchange this winter on Tumblr and Twitter. Please check out the interest check by [clicking here](https://gaaleegaaholidayexchange.tumblr.com/post/187822149159/interest-check-gaaleegaa-holiday-exchange-hi) if that sounds like something you'd be interested in!

Gaara didn’t expect to see Lee again after their awkward detente in his driveway, but it seemed the universe was conspiring to offer him not just second and third chances, but fourths and fifths. He was out front of the shop, watering the window boxes, when a pair of neon orange sneakers under moss green track pants came to stand next to him. He didn’t even need to look up or see the sweat dripping to stain the pavement to realize it was Lee. 

He was smiling, shoulders heaving, sweat drops trailing down the shell of his bronze ears and sluicing down his neck, all of him reflective in the late winter sunshine. Muscled arms were clasped around the broad base of a rubber tree pot. 

“Hi Gaara!” he said, and his teeth glistened. 

The plant’s wide leaves were a stunning combination of lush green and tan, the variegation looking as if it had been applied by a painter’s skilled hand rather than an accident of nature. But the plant was dusty, clearly dehydrated, and clumps of cottony white scum clustered at the base of the stems. 

“Don’t take that inside,” Gaara said, in lieu of a greeting.

Lee’s mouth dropped into a sullen moue, his forehead wrinkling with confusion and concern.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a gentleness that felt startlingly alien. “I didn’t realize I’d upset you.” He shifted the plant to his hip and made to reach out towards Gaara’s shoulder with his free hand.

Gaara jerked away, gloved hands raised defensively. 

“Take it out back. Go straight through the back room. Don’t. Touch. Anything.” He punctuated his final words with a jab of his watering can, adjusting his wide-brimmed hat so the shade covered his eyes. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Lee complied, the tilt of his shoulders still radiating concern as he elbowed open the door and walked in a straight, careful line behind the counter, judiciously avoiding the rows of succulents arranged on every aisle. Gaara watched him, hawk-like, through the plate glass window until he was satisfied Lee had made it back outside without mishap. 

It was the work of a moment to finish his watering, discard his gloves, gather his supplies, and hustle to the small outdoor enclosure behind the shop. 

He found Lee there, standing with his back to the door, staring around with frank curiosity at the barrels of sand, quartzite, and soil arrayed around the gravel lot. It was then he realized Lee had never seen this place in daylight. His hands were still clasped like a vise around the rubber plant’s pot. 

Gaara cleared his throat to draw Lee’s attention. Lee spun around, wide-eyed. 

“Set it down there.” Gaara gestured to a spot in the middle of the gravel lot, well away from the surrounding soil. 

“Is this where you make all the different soils?” Lee asked, setting the pot down and bounding back over to Gaara’s side like an especially eager puppy. 

“Yes. Put this on,” Gaara held out a utility-sized trash bag to Lee and set about punching head and arm holes in his own, yanking it down to hang over his shoulders like a makeshift poncho. 

“What are these for?” Lee asked, even as he copied Gaara’s movements to the best of his ability, making the arm holes a bit too large in his enthusiasm. He took the rubber gardening gloves that Gaara offered him and snapped those on as well.

“Mealy bugs are very attracted to succulents. I don’t want any contamination inside the shop.” 

“Mealy bugs?” Lee tilted his head to the side in question.

“Common garden pests. They left that white residue on your plant.”

Lee’s eyebrows arched in surprise. 

“Oh! I thought it was just dust,” he explained. “To be honest, everyone at the dojo sort of forgot about it for a while. My teacher thought it was an artificial plant, actually!” 

Gaara stared at Lee blankly for a moment.

“How-“ he began.

“Because it’s called a rubber plant? He thought it was actual rubber.”

Gaara’s mouth dropped open and his brows drew down in consternation.

“He thought-”

Lee giggled and rubbed the back of his neck, head hanging down.

“I know, I know, pretty silly, right?”

“That’s one word for it,” Gaara replied, then left Lee to his own devices to retrieve the hose from its spool. “Stand back.”

He cut the hose on with a kick of his foot and used his thumb to aim the stream at the plant, keeping the arc of water low to the ground. Iridescent rainbows danced in the misting spray. He saturated the plant top to bottom, then repeated the process bottom to top. Job done, he turned the spigot off and went to examine the plant. 

“That will get rid of the instars and the adults,” he explained, as he and Lee crouched down to peer at the plant. He rubbed at one of the cottony clusters with freshly gloved hands; it dissolved and ran down the leaf, leaving behind a milky smear. “Grab that spray and two rags.”

Lee returned with the items and passed them into Gaara’s outstretched hands. Even through two layers of thick rubber, Gaara was acutely aware of the brush of his fingers. 

He demonstrated for Lee how to clean the mealy bugs’ trails from the plant and stem with the insecticidal spray, then they set about refreshing the plant together. It was rotten work, thankless except for the occasional flickers of relief from the parched plant (which Lee couldn’t even experience), but it was the exact type of thing that put Gaara in a perfectly relaxed mindset. He felt wholly in the moment, a thrumming link formed between the ground beneath his feet, his body, and the plant beneath his hands. 

“So,” he said, once his breathing had evened enough to permit speech, “the dojo. Is that where you have martial arts practice?”

“Mhm!” Lee replied, staring intently at a particularly difficult spot that he was rubbing with enough vigor to cause Gaara concern for the plant’s stability. The plant gave a plaintive rattle of energy. “Actually, I have a tournament this weekend!”

“Oh?” Gaara raised an eyebrow, gaze still fixed on the underside of one especially cottony leaf. 

“Um, I was thinking…” Lee started. Gaara looked up at him through the plant’s leaves, studying the blossoming red of his cheeks. “Would you want to come? To my tournament, I mean. And … maybe get dinner afterwards? My treat!”

“Like a date?” Gaara asked bluntly, staring Lee down, his belly full of anxious stone.

Lee stared hard at the plant’s soil, his fist clenched around the cleaning rag. He looked up at Gaara, a cautious hope burning in his dark eyes.

“If you want.”

Something roiled inside Gaara - creeper vines unfurling and wending around his lungs, his ribcage, the tip of his sternum. He swallowed around a lump in his throat. 

“Yeah,” he breathed, and the tendrils blossomed into bright sprigs of lemon yellow and sunshine orange. “Yes, I want,” he clarified, then turned back to the plant and began scrubbing at the stem anew. 

Lee let out a soft, relieved laugh.

“Great!” he said. He gave his half of the plant a final look-over, then turned the pot so Gaara could inspect it. “I was starting to run out of plants to bring you,” he added under his breath. 

Gaara stood and shucked his gloves and trash bag poncho into the garbage can, wiping sweat from his forehead. The whole ordeal was rather more physical exertion than he was used to, which certainly also accounted for the burning in his cheeks and the clamminess of his palms. 

“Have you been killing plants on purpose to have an excuse to come talk to me?” he asked archly. 

Lee’s neck, visible above his shirt collar when he stooped to lift the plant, darkened with a flush of blood. 

“No!” he exclaimed, hoisting the pot to rest on one hip. A trickle of dirty water escaped down the side of his pants and commanded his focus for a moment before he snapped back to attention and jogged to catch Gaara, who was re-entering the shop through the back door. “I really am that bad with plants,” he protested, as Gaara rang him up for a bottle of pest control spray, then commandeered Lee’s phone from his full hands to enter his contact information.

Gaara watched him skeptically for a long moment, waiting for the telltale buzz that would signal his text from Lee’s phone had been sent. 

Gaara’s phone rattled on the counter, but he didn’t drop his gaze. Lee rubbed the back of his neck bashfully.

“I admit I may have volunteered to rescue a few plants who otherwise would have been disposed of, though,” he said finally. 

Gaara let a tiny smirk bypass the constraints of his lips. 

“I see,” he said. “Well. I’ll see you this weekend.”

“It’s a date!” Lee called, waving cheerfully over his shoulder as he departed.

“Yes,” Gaara murmured to himself, returning to his work, “it certainly is.”


	6. Nephrolepis exaltata (Boston Fern)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note before we begin, they call Gai _Sifu_ instead of _sensei_ because that's the name used for teachers in kung-fu schools.

Gaara lingered awkwardly on the sidewalk outside the gymnasium, feeling adrift in a sea of mostly families with children. The high sun beat down on him and split the chill winter air, sweat beading behind his ears and across his upper lip. He tugged at the collar of his cardigan and undid the top button of his flannel shirt. Scrubbing anxious fingers through his hair (combed, despite himself, but without product in deference to Lee’s preferences), he fumbled in his pocket for his phone. 

_I’m here,_ he typed with clumsy fingers, then looked up to stare around the crowd.

He felt overdressed, toes sweltering in his loafers between swarms of moms in sloppy buns and yoga pants and their children running roughshod over the sidewalk in uniforms of every color. Two even rows of dark-haired teenagers marched past in lockstep, dressed in matching white uniforms. Gaara eyed the flapping, bright yellow banner hung over the gymnasium entrance announcing the tournament’s location. 

Suddenly, there was a blur of motion out of the corner of his eye and Gaara found himself tackled sideways with incredible force. He staggered, and one hand clenched instinctively around the strap of his messenger bag. He would have punched the person if he weren’t so worried about destroying the contents of his bag.

“Gaara!” shouted a familiar voice. Strong arms squeezed around his shoulders and pulled him up onto his tiptoes. “You made it!”

Gaara gave Lee a small smile that was more than half a wince and patted his forearms, the only part of Lee he could reach with his upper arms pinned down to his side by the hug. 

“Hi, Lee.”

Lee finally released him, bouncing on his feet in his soft-soled shoes. 

“Oh!” Lee said, and his hand found the side of Gaara’s head. “Your hair!”

Gaara’s cheeks went hot under the scrutiny. Lee’s face was suddenly very close to his. 

“It looks really nice,” Lee said softly, fingers combing through the stray hair that fell in front of Gaara’s ear. 

“Thank you. You look nice, too,” he murmured. 

It was the truth. Lee was wearing a dark green, silky uniform with black frogs down the front. A black sash was tied around his waist and a sweatband pushed his hair back from his forehead. A massive smile crowned his face, and his hand drifted down to Gaara’s cheek, pulling them into closer proximity. 

Behind Lee, someone cleared their throat. 

Lee and Gaara jumped apart, though Lee’s hand didn’t leave Gaara’s space entirely, dropping instead to rest on his shoulder. 

Standing there with her arms crossed was the girl from Lee’s lock screen. Approaching behind her in measured steps was a tall boy with long, dark hair and pale eyes. They were dressed in uniforms identical to Lee’s but for the color: hers a pale pink and his a saturated indigo. 

“Gaara, this is my friend Tenten and my teammate Neji!” Lee exclaimed, gesturing to the pair. “Guys, this is Gaara!”

Gaara’s throat went tight. He was suddenly acutely aware of the weight of his bag on his hip, the pressure of Lee’s hand on his shoulder, and the heat of the sun overhead. He swallowed; his dry throat ached.

“Nice to meet you,” he gruffed. 

Tenten gave a sly smile and slung a long black bag off her shoulder. It hit the ground with a threatening rattle of metal. She stuck her hand out to shake.

“Nice to meet you, too,” she said, but the look on her face was one of cautious scrutiny. When Gaara shook her hand, she squeezed so hard his joints creaked. 

Neji shook Gaara’s hand altogether more delicately, his pale hand cold to the touch. He studied Gaara’s face, his light eyes seeming to stare right into Gaara’s very soul. Gaara willed him to blink, but he didn’t. 

Finally, he looked away. Lee released Gaara’s shoulder from the vise grip he had, until that moment, not been aware he was being squeezed in. 

“You’re just as Lee described you,” Neji said a bit primly. 

“Oh?” Gaara rose to the bait. “And how was that?”

“All good things!” Lee interrupted them, one foot edging in front of Gaara protectively. “Only good things. Right, Tenten?”

“Right.” She smiled at Lee, a real one that reached her eyes, then punched Neji in the upper arm, hard. “Chill,” she cautioned him, “this isn’t an interrogation.”

Neji scowled, rubbing the offended area. 

“We’re going to be late for the first competition,” he said stiffly, then spun on his heel to stalk into the gym. Tenten rushed to catch up with him and knuckled the top of his head until he swatted her away. Lee took Gaara’s hand and they followed the pair inside. 

The gym itself was even louder than outside, every squeak of shoes on the wood floor amplified by the cinderblock walls. The bleachers rattled with unsteady noise as parents and children filed into them, taking their seats to await being called. The air rang with shouts and whistles and warning cries. Lee pressed close to Gaara’s shoulder as he recounted the course of the competition: the children’s division first, followed by the adults, and four categories: individual forms, weapons, group forms, and full-contact hand-to-hand combat. 

“I do everything but weapons,” Lee explained, “but hand-to-hand is my favorite!”

“Because he likes beating the snot out of people,” Tenten commented wryly as they took their seats in the front row of the bleachers. As more people crowded in around them, Lee was jostled until he was pressed against the entire length of Gaara’s side. Gaara nervously arranged his bag between his feet, then settled back in to lean against Lee, feeling oddly insulated and secure despite the overwhelming noise around him. 

“Because hot-blooded competition is the finest expression of youth and power!” Lee corrected her, fist clenched passionately to his chest. 

“Well said, Lee!” boomed a deep voice. There was a screeching of wheels against wood floor, and a man in a wheelchair came skidding to a halt in front of the group. Neji jerked his feet back under himself to avoid his toes being run over. 

“Sifu Gai!” Lee cried. “Gaara, this is our teacher! Sifu, this is Gaara.”

Gaara leaned forward cautiously to shake one of the man’s gloved hands. The man looked just like an older, taller Lee - same dark hair, same thick eyebrows, same intense gaze. The man yanked Gaara forward by his hand and stared him down, eyes narrowed as he scrutinized Gaara’s face. Gaara’s eyes widened in return; a nervous chill creeped down his spine.

Finally, Gai released him, seemingly satisfied. Gaara cradled his aching hand to his chest. 

“Nice to meet you, Gaara!” he boomed. It seemed Gai had only one volume setting: loud. “You’re the young man who saved my rubber plant, aren’t you?”

Gaara nodded mutely, unable to speak.

“Well I certainly owe you a debt of gratitude! And with how much Lee here has been speaking about you, I think-”

Lee leapt forward with his arms extended, nearly colliding with his teacher.

“I’m sure Gaara doesn’t want to hear about all that!” he babbled, arms waving frantically. 

Tenten huffed a laugh behind her hand.

“Sifu,” Neji cut in smoothly. Despite the low tone of his voice, his words carried over the noise of the crowd. “I think they’re getting ready to start the first performances.”

“Oh!” Gai snapped to attention, hands returning to his wheels. “I’ll be off then! Gaara, I hope to see you around the dojo sometime!” 

Gaara didn’t have time to respond before Gai sped away, upper arm muscles bulging as he careened between clusters of children and their teachers. Gaara blinked silently, grounding himself to the feeling of Lee’s hand in his own. If Gai was always that energetic, he didn’t think he’d be going by the dojo anytime soon. 

With a shout from one of the officials, the children’s competition began. Gaara found it hard to stay engaged or follow the flow of the contest. The children were cute enough, sure, but his eyes kept drifting to Lee’s expressive face. Lee smiled or clapped or frowned or pouted with every motion, his eyebrows more animated than any of the action on the floor. 

When Lee jumped to his feet, cheering for one of the students from his dojo in an explosion of movement and noise, a parent behind them shushed him and hissed for him to sit. Gaara bit back a smile as he tugged Lee’s hand until he resumed his seat on the bleachers. Lee’s hand in his remained a steady pressure, anchoring him away from the sounds of the world around him. 

The overhead speakers buzzed and Lee suddenly jolted to attention.

“Oh! We have to go line up!” Lee leapt to his feet in a burst of motion. Impulsively, he slung an arm around Gaara’s shoulders and pressed his lips to the crown of his tousled head. Red flooded down Gaara’s face to stain his cheeks and neck. His fingertips clenched in the fabric of his jeans. 

“Good luck,” he mumbled, but he wasn’t sure if Lee heard him as he dashed away, his classmates hot on his heels. 

Gaara watched the initial competitors with an expression of affected boredom, his eyes more often wandering to Lee waiting on the sidelines, his fists clenched at his side and his eyes burning with an intensity unlike any Gaara had ever seen before. 

When it came time for Lee to demonstrate his forms, Gaara sat up straight on the bleacher seat, the edge of the wood digging into his tailbone.

Lee assumed the floor and neatly brought his feet together. Hands clasped in front of him, he bowed politely to the judges, then the audience, his back at a perfect forty-five degree angle to the floor. The first notes of a song crackled through the speakers, and Lee flew into a flurry of movement. 

He moved so swiftly Gaara’s eyes could hardly keep up with him - spinning, kicking, punching, leaping, diving. His back hit the mat once, then twice, then he leapt into the air and flipped over himself, legs scissoring. His feet had hardly touched the mat before he was back in mid-air, tumbling again and again with his fists flashing out in every direction. 

Gaara’s mouth dropped open around a gasp. 

It seemed hardly a moment before the last notes of the song trailed to a close. Lee’s body returned to perfect stillness, standing upright in the same position in which he had begun. He bowed neatly, then strode off the mat to a smattering of polite applause. 

Gaara suddenly found himself standing, hands over his head and clapping as hard as he could, the sound echoing around the gymnasium’s high ceiling. 

Lee had called himself _ordinary_ once. Now that Gaara had seen what he could do, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Gaara may have had magic in his hands, but Lee? Lee had magic in his every cell. 

Lee didn’t return during the weapons competition, but Gaara watched, rapt, as Tenten took the floor with a sword under either arm. As her performance began, she spun in circles, the two weapons flashing and clanging against each other. She flipped over her own head in a daring high kick and returned to her feet, dragging the blades against one another with a _shing_. Finally, she dropped to one hand and spun, feet scything out and sword dragging along the mat. When she regained her feet for the final notes of her song, Gaara noticed that the tip of one sword was bent. There was a crackle of silver energy, just on the edge of sight, and the sword straightened itself as she bowed. Tenten caught Gaara’s staring eyes and winked knowingly. 

Then came the group forms. Lee, Tenten, and Neji took to the mat in their matching uniforms, each holding a different weapon. Tenten stood with a long-handled spear in each hand; on either side of her stood Lee with nunchaku hanging off his sash, and Neji with a long staff in his left hand. 

On Tenten’s signal, the three stepped forward and away from each other. Tenten gave a sharp cry, and they leapt into motion. It was like something out of a movie - Tenten gamely spinning a spear in each hand while Lee and Neji feinted jabs at her and each other. They carefully maneuvered around the mat, leaping over one another in a whirlwind of motion and abrupt cries. Lee’s nunchaku spun so fast above his head and behind his back that they became invisible. Tenten struck at him with her spear, and he pretended to stumble before jolting upright and knocking the spear from her hand with a spinning kick. Neji took the opportunity to sweep both their feet from beneath them with his staff, wresting the other spear from Tenten’s hand as the two fell to the mat with a theatrical shout. As the music began to fade, Neji stood above them both with the staff and spear in his outstretched hands, seemingly pinning them down. At the last second, Lee folded his legs under him and sprung to his feet, nunchaku a blur as they knocked the spear and staff aside. The tableau ended with the chain of Lee’s nunchaku flashing across Neji’s throat. 

The crowd’s applause was overwhelmed by the shouting of a now-familiar deep voice as the three bowed and departed the mat. 

“Bravo! Bravo!” shouted Gai, his words distinctly watery even across the span of the gym. “Bravissimo!”

Finally, it was time for Lee’s favorite event. Gaara hardly recognized him in his padded helmet, bowing to his competitor before they each took up their position on opposite corners of a square mat, its edges demarcated in red. The official gave the starting cry and Lee’s opponent edged forward, leg casting out in a tentative kick. In a flash, Lee seized the man’s leg and hauled it over his shoulder. The man’s back hit the mat and he went skidding off - not just into the red out-of-bounds, but off the mat entirely, the back of his silky shirt squealing on the laminated wood. 

Lee bounded to the edge of the mat, but the other man held his hands up: _No more._

And with that, it was over as soon as it had begun. Lee walked off with his shoulders slumped in disappointment, but Gaara couldn’t stop staring. 

No, Lee wasn’t ordinary at all. 

Gaara didn’t understand the scoring system for the competition, but he certainly noticed when Lee was handed a large golden trophy, hoisting it over his head with a beaming grin. Gaara found himself standing again, letting out a shout in a voice he hadn’t known he possessed. 

“Go, Lee!” 

Lee looked across the crowded gymnasium in surprise. Their eyes met, and Lee’s smile spread to cover his entire face. Gaara felt rooted to the spot, a rush of warm joy flooding his body as he smiled back. 

After all the glad-handing and goodbyes had concluded, Lee jogged over to find Gaara loitering at the edge of the gym. Chattering people, sagging with fatigue and muttering to one another as they left for home, formed rivers of motion on either side of them. 

“So?” Lee asked, still bouncing on his toes, a well of limitless energy with his trophy clutched under his arm. “What did you think?”

Gaara found himself at a loss for words. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. 

Lee’s smile dropped into a concerned frown. Gaara noticed the edge of his collar was damp with sweat. His hand twitched in his pants pocket before he redirected it. He fidgeted in his messenger bag for a moment before he pulled out his gift and thrust it forward at Lee.

“Congratulations,” he croaked. “You were … extraordinary.”

Lee looked down at the tiny pot in his damp hands. Within it was a miniature fern, its light green fiddleheads curling in the moist air.

“Oh,” he breathed, stroking a finger along one downy frond, “it’s precious! Thank you!”

Gaara bit his lower lip. 

“You won’t be able to overwater this one,” he said, stepping close. “It needs attention every day.”

Lee looked up from the plant to Gaara’s face, his smile somehow broader than it had been even on the champions’ podium. He leaned closer, and Gaara went suddenly breathless. 

Then, Gaara’s stomach growled, loud enough to be heard over the clamoring crowd.

“Hungry?” Lee asked, eyebrows raised. “Let’s go get you some dinner.”


	7. Narcissus pseudonarcissus (Common Daffodil)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the end of Heliotrope! Thank you to everyone who has read and commented throughout!
> 
> Also, I'm going to be hosting a GaaLee/LeeGaa Fanworks Exchange for the holidays! You can read more about it [here on Tumblr](https://gaaleegaaholidayexchange.tumblr.com)! I hope everyone will participate!

Gaara insisted on driving them to the restaurant, a homey diner done up in all the trappings of old Americana: tube lights illuminating the neon _Open_ sign and red vinyl seats that squeaked when they sat down across from one another, Lee setting his fern cautiously on the sticky linoleum between them. 

Gaara managed to tear his eyes away from Lee long enough to mumble his order to their waitress, a round-faced woman with a half-dozen pens jutting from her bouffant hairdo. She smacked her cherry-colored lips and called him, ‘_hon_’ in a drawl when she set their plates down. 

“So,” Gaara said, fingers drumming on the checkered tabletop. There was a daffodil in a slender glass vase between them, flanked by novelty salt and pepper shakers in the shape of chubby cows. “I started advertising for some gardening classes.”

Lee drew back from taking a bite of a cheeseburger half as big as his head, eyes wide as he chewed. He swallowed, the bulge of food moving visibly down his throat.. 

“Really? That’s so wonderful!”

“I talked to my sister about it, and she agreed it was a good idea. I put some flyers up at the university and the senior center this week.”

Lee stuffed a fistful of fries in his mouth, eyes shining.

“Mmph, let me know if you want me to hang one up at the dojo!” A bit of ketchup flecked his cheek and Gaara’s fingers itched to wipe it away for him. Instead, he pushed Lee his napkin. 

Lee raised his eyebrows in question until Gaara indicated the spot with a gesture to his own face. Lee blushed dark enough to obscure the offending condiment and rubbed the spot vigorously. Gaara stared down at his plate, fingers picking nervously at his plate of chicken wings until sauce smeared on his fingertips. Probably not the best choice of first date food, he thought to himself a bit belatedly.

“I didn’t realize how much I liked teaching until you started coming by the shop,” Gaara said to his hands. 

Lee reached over the table, knocking over the pepper shaker, and grabbed Gaara’s empty hand in his. Gaara looked up at him cautiously. Lee swallowed another massive bite of food; half his burger was already gone. 

“I’ll be the first one to sign up for your classes!” he said, his mouth a straight and serious line. A promise, then. 

Gaara squeezed his hand gently and watched as the blood filled Lee’s face from the bottom up, like the mercury rising in a thermometer. Lee shoveled another handful of fries into his mouth with his unoccupied hand. 

“I’ll need you to teach me how to handle this one, after all,” he said once he had swallowed, his face returning to its freckled bronze. He gestured with his head towards the fern, quietly furled on his side of the table. 

Gaara attempted a bite of his chicken, a difficult prospect one-handed. Lee noticed and freed Gaara’s hand. Gaara tried not to feel too grouchy about the loss of contact as he chewed. 

“Do you know where you’ll put it?” he asked, once half the chicken bones were neatly stacked in one corner of his plate. He licked a bit of sauce from his fingers and looked back up to find Lee staring at him with his head pillowed in his open palms.

Lee shook his head, mouth slightly agape, eyes darting all over Gaara’s face. 

“It needs somewhere shady, not too bright. Ferns naturally grow in forests,” Gaara informed him. He searched the span of the table for an undirtied napkin and, finding none, settled for sucking sauce off his thumb.

“Maybe you could come by and help me pick a spot?” Lee offered. 

Gaara’s thumbnail nicked his lower lip as he pulled his fingers from his mouth in a hurry. 

“Okay,” he said. 

“You’ve got-” Lee flapped his hand a bit uselessly. “Um.” He dipped his thumb in his water glass and wiped the corner of Gaara’s mouth. Gaara leaned forward across the table to make the space between them smaller. 

Lee’s thumb lingered on the join of Gaara’s lips. His mouth parted as if to speak.

“Sorry for the wait, darlin’.” The waitress set a glass on the edge of the table with a _clunk_.

They lurched apart. On the table between them was a strawberry-pink milkshake in a tall soda counter glass, piled high with whipped cream and crowned with a shiny red cherry.

The waitress glanced between them for a moment, one over-plucked eyebrow arched.

“One check, then?” she said.

Lee nodded silently, smiling without teeth. 

“Gotcha.” She gave a knowing wink and set a straw on either side of the milkshake with a crinkle of paper. 

“I hope you don’t mind,” Lee said as he unwrapped both straws and set them in each side of the glass. “I’ve just … never done this before, and I’ve always wanted to….”

Gaara stilled Lee’s nervous hands with a hand on his wrist.

“I don’t mind,” he reassured him. 

They leaned in at the same time, each sipping from his own straw. The milkshake was a little oversweet, sugar and ice cold making Gaara’s teeth ache, but he locked eyes with Lee and didn’t pull back until Lee did the same. 

They smiled at each other, and Lee hiccuped a giggle behind his hand. 

“Oh no,” he said. “You’ve got another-” His hand reached across the table and swiped a bit of whipped cream from Gaara’s nose. 

This time, Gaara didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Lee’s hand and held it steady while he leaned across the table to kiss him. 

Lee’s mouth was soft beneath his, his lips cold but his tongue warm and saccharine sweet. Gaara closed his eyes as a sticky hand stroked his cheekbone, mouths moving in synchrony. 

Gaara drew back for a breath and discovered his hands glowing gold on either side of Lee’s face. On the table between them the daffodil strained towards the light of his fingers, the fern’s leaves uncurled and waving. 

Gaara still didn’t believe in love at first sight, but maybe believing in magic was enough.


End file.
